The present invention relates to a multicore fiber, and is preferred to the case where a connection to another optical component is further simplified.
Presently, an optical fiber for use in a generally popular optical fiber communication system has a structure in which a single core is enclosed with a cladding and an optical signal is propagated through this core to transmit information.
In the optical fiber communication system in these years, a large number of optical fibers ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds optical fibers are used, and the volume of information transmitted are dramatically increased. In order to reduce the number of optical fibers in such an optical fiber communication system, such a multicore fiber is proposed in which a plurality of cores is enclosed with a cladding.
Moreover, in order to facilitate a connection between these multicore fibers, Patent Document 1 below proposes a multicore fiber in which a cladding includes a marker along the length direction of the cladding. In the multicore fiber in Patent Document 1, the marker is disposed on a portion overlapping in the direction in which a plurality of cores is arranged.